Water crisis in Gaza
This entry was posted on 6/26/2006 6:59 AM and is filed under Water.
To the Editor,
Your article on the crisis of water in the Palestinian city of Gaza shows a lack of understanding of the critical issues facing the Palestinian population in the city. Gaza and Rafah with a population of over 1.5 million people cramped within a very small land area with no access to the outside world. It has been less than two weeks that the people of Gaza could even see the beach or go to another country without a strict, and stringent Israeli restrictions on travel outside the city.
It seems that your article blames the Palestinians for being imprisoned in their own land with little or no access to the outside world while their land and water was stolen by few thousands of settlers who came from New York and Los Angeles. I suggest that you look at the forest rather than the tree and see the roots of the problem of the scarcity of water in Gaza. The people of Gaza cannot travel to other Palestinian cities to shop, live or even visit relatives. They are confined to a tiny stretch of land with very limited resources and the inhabitants are doing their best to use what they have. Few thousand settlers were using 60 percent of the water while 1.5 million people were left with less than 8 gallons of water a day to drink, cook, bathe and irrigate their farms. The Israeli policies of water deprivation and uprooting trees drove a city that was once self sufficient and prosperous due to its agricultural production to a nest of hungry, thirsty and devastated population.
You owe the people of Gaza an apology and another in-depth look at the issue and providing your readers with a clear and objective picture on how the people of Gaza came to be so thirsty for water. It is the occupation stupid.
Riad Hamad
Austin, Texas
GAZA STRIP — Dangerously low drinking water reserves,
dilapidated decontamination facilities, and a nearly
dry water table are the warning signs of a looming
crisis in Gaza, according to Shaddad al-Atili, water
and ecological affairs advisor to the Palestinian
Authority. "We are heading toward an ecological
catastrophe," he told Agence France Presse last week,
citing as one reason Gaza's rapidly growing population
of 1.3 million people, 900,000 of them refugees.
Rain alone isn’t enough to sustain the Palestinian
territory, which receives between 1.5 billion to 1.9
billion cubic feet of rainwater annually but consumes
about three times that amount, Atili says. "Besides,
Israel has not authorized us to import water from
regions outside Gaza." Israel has offered to sell them
desalinated water for $1 per cubic meter, which the
Palestinians find too costly.
Water allocation is part of the ongoing negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians over the creation
of an independent Palestinian state, along with
borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the return of
refugees.
Some 4,300 wells are allowed by law, but scarcity has
caused Gaza residents to dig another 2,400 without
permission, illegally draining water from the already
low water table, Atili reports.
Gaza has one of the world's highest population
densities, 8,642 people per square mile, and the
population is expected to reach 2.2 million people in
10 years.
